Dreams of Gold: Mesoamerican Metalwork and the Question of Form.

This article examines the cultural meanings and formal characteristics of Mesoamerican goldwork, focusing on how Indigenous peoples, particularly the Aztecs, Maya, and Mixtecs, understood and valued gold differently from Europeans. Gold was not merely a fungible commodity but was deeply embedded in social relations, status, and spiritual agency, with objects retaining their historical and social identities across time. The article highlights the retention of Isthmo-Colombian gold forms—such as hammered discs and flanged ornaments—in early Mesoamerican metalwork, arguing that these forms were consciously preserved to maintain the material’s cultural biography and associations despite shifts in iconography. This persistence of form reflects broader Mesoamerican worldviews in which matter and form are inseparable and imbued with agency, linking past and present through material continuity even amid cultural transformation.